Iliana’s mouth tightened at that. He sounded weak and breathless, and she knew that his claim was just male pride speaking. She peered back the way she had come, then ducked instinctively lower as another rain of arrows flew overhead. There was no question but that they had to get him off the wall and tend to his injury. She would have preferred dealing with it there on the spot, but arrows were still flying overhead and it was possible another one might find a target.

“We cannot walk.”

Iliana glanced back at her mother’s worried words.

“I can so,” Angus snapped, shifting as if to rise.

Iliana stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “She said we cannot walk, not you,” she explained quietly. “And she is right. We risk another arrow do we try. Even bent over, you are too tall to keep beneath the safety of the wall.”

“What do we do?”

Iliana hesitated for a moment, then began to remove the plaid she wore over her undertunic.

“What are you doing?” her mother asked with dismay.

“We shall use this to drag him to the steps.”

“I can walk, I tell ye,” Angus muttered faintly as she laid out her plaid flat on the stone parapet beside him, then shifted out of the way. “Think you you can roll onto your stomach on the plaid?”

“I’ll not be carried off the wall like—”

“Stop being a stubborn old fool and roll onto the plaid. If my daughter is willing to run about half-naked in front of everyone, the least you can do is cooperate.”

Angus flushed at Lady Wildwood’s reprimand but did as instructed, though not without grumbling about what the world was coming to when women thought they could order their laird about. Ignoring him, Iliana and her mother moved to crouch at the top of the plaid. Each of them taking a corner, they straightened until they stood half-upright, bent at the waist; then they began to move forward, tugging the plaid behind as they went.

Chapter Eighteen

Angus grumbled all the way to the stairs leading down to the bailey. Once there, he insisted on moving under his own steam, and actually managed to do so with a bit of assistance. With one arm across Iliana’s shoulders and one over her mother’s, they managed to walk him sideways down the stairs, then half-walk, half-carry him to the steps of the keep, but that was as far as they got him.

Iliana and her mother wanted to take him inside to tend to his wound, but Angus would not hear of it. Not while his home was under attack. Giving in to his stubbornness, they sat him on the bottom step of the keep, so that he could shout orders at the few men who had been left behind while she and her mother worked on his injury.